Monday, July 21, 2003

The ever-hilarious Dan Savage, author of the Savage Love sex advice column (warning: contains sexually explicit content, so be caref… hey, come back here!) is doing an excellent job of spreading the use of “santorum” as the term for an anal-sex-related phenomenon of which Sen. Rick Santorum would certainly disapprove. C’mon everyone, do your part: this is a meme worth propagating.

There is one minor problem, though: there are other people out there with the name Santorum who might not deserve this kind of rough treatment. But when one of Savage’s readers pointed this out, Savage shot her down:

Sorry, SINMLN, but innocent people named Santorum will just have to deal, just like guys named Dick and girls named Peg and people named Lewinsky. If other folks named Santorum are angry, well, they should direct their anger at the jackass senator himself. He brought santorum down on all their heads, not me.

Well put. But is what’s sauce for the goose also sauce for the gander? Another reader tries to play turnabout:

I've got a great idea, Dan. Now that your readers have successfully coined the term "santorum," why don't they co-opt the name of another hatemonger? After being fired from his MSNBC talk show for telling a gay caller that he should "get AIDS and die, you pig" and "go eat a sausage and choke on it," shock jock Michael Savage certainly deserves to have his name immortalized as an offensive sex act. As for all the innocent people named Savage out there, they'll just have to deal with it, won't they?

D’oh. But Dan cleverly worms his way out, observing that “savage” already has a (more positive) sexual connotation. Lucky for him, else he might have been hoist by his own petard.